FINANCING THE PUBLIC HOSPITALS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 232, 29 June 1939, Page 8

FINANCING THE PUBLIC HOSPITALS

Tuesday’s discussion by the Wellington Hospital Board at the special meeting held to decide the question of raising a loan of £435,00C for the Hutt Valley Hospital renders it necessary to revert to the insistent demand for a fairer system of financing the public hospitals. In its unanimous decision to make a radical departure from the recommendation of the Royal Commission, the board, took the view that expenditure on hospital services must be determined by the requirements of the case, and should not be influenced by the incidence o The reply to this attitude is that, if the interests of the ratepayers are of no account, if their protests are simply a waste of breath, then the special taxation levied upon them should be removed, and the financing of the hospitals placed upon a fairer basis. As it is, the ratepayers are trebly taxed for the hospitals—as general taxpayers, as payers of hospital levies, and as contributors to the Social Security Fund in respect of national health insurance. No amount of argument, will alter the fact that such a system is inequitable. In its incidence on the rural districts, where the farming industries are having a hard fight against crippling costs, it is oppressive, and the levies are out of all proportion to their share of the hospital facilities and benefits available as compared with the urban districts. Reform in this connexion is awaited with growing impatience, and the public will look to Parliament this session to give the. question its serious attention. Not only must there be a change in the incidence of hospital taxation, but there is obviously demanded also a stricter supervision of hospital expenditure. In this latter connexion the disingenuous reply of the chairman of the Wellington Hospital Board to the criticism of the contributary local bodies of a pioposal which much more than doubled the expenditure recommended by the Royal Commission for the Hutt Valley hospital should be noted. The board, said Mr. Glover, had no intention of . spending a penny more than had been recommended by the commission; they had only exceeded its estimate in that they proposed building , a larger hospital. This attitude claims, in effect, superiority of judgment over even a Royal Commission,'and a free rein for extravagant expenditure without responsibility to those who are called upon year after year for substantial increases in their contributions. z